Hrishida The common man’s director

I first watched Anand when I was in class VI. That was in 1994. Before that Hrishikesh Mukherjee was for me just another Bengali who would come up in conversations between my parents and their friends.  And that was well before lymph sarcoma of the intestine had become Bolywood’s favourite disease. Anand was my first tryst with Hrishikesh Mukherjee, an institution in Bollywood.



Hrishida, as he was lovingly called by Bollywood as well as his fans, was truly a peoples’ director. Infact I must say, he was the director of the common man. Most of his movies moved around the hopes, aspirations and problems of the middle class, the common man or more precisely people like us. So we have a Ram Prasad Sharma forced to play a double role to keep his job (Golmaal) or a cribbing belligerent joint family which is forced to stay together (not enough money to build individual houses of course.) and which finally stays together due to the efforts of the family cook (Bawarchi). We also have an elderly father seeing his motherless daughter slipping away till a rich bachelor decides to marry her and have her treated for a disease whose treatment was not available any where in India  and needless to say, was prohibitively costly (Mili).



And somewhere between all this, he brought in the values and the emotions, especially those of relationships. which the average Indian so lovingly clings to. I remember the scene from Chupke Chupke when Amitabh Bachchan as Dr. Parimal Tripathi is about to reach Bombay. He is quite apprehensive about the role play which he will have to undergo mainly because of two reasons. One he is actually a professor of English and, Dr. Tripathi whose role he is supposed to play is a professor of Botany. Secondly, to quote him, “Main jise bhabhi kah kar bulata hoon mujhe uska naam lena padega”. A similar situation was also shown in Anand when Dr. Prakash Kulkarni’s wife calls Anand as her brother. She says “bhabhi nahi bahan”. And the first thing which Rajesh Khanna says is “phir to main naam le kar bulaoonga”. At first sight this might seem funny. But once we come to think of it, not calling your bhabhi’s (elder sister-in-law) name is a custom which is still followed in many Indian homes. Or the conversation between Dharmendra and David in Chupke Chupke where David says, “Bhasha khud mein itni mahaan hoti hai ki koi uska mazaak nahi udaa sakta”. At first sight this might seem too trivial. We take many of these things  as granted. But the fact is these value systems have become such an integral part of our culture, that their imbibition is in a very subtle way. I have heard people saying that Bollywood has in most cases been ahead of its times. It has alienated people from the cultural heritage of our country. Infact the great Satyajit Ray was once quoted as saying that “ Bollywood projects an India which is not India”. Thankfully Hrishida chose to differ, though without going overboard.



As with value systems so with relationships. Somewhere deep down, we Indians are pretty sentimental about various relationships. Natural or acquired, most of us cling to them zealously. Hrishida too thought so. I am reminded of the scene from Golmaal where Mrs. Srivastava (Dina Pathak), whose daughter stays in Canada, tells Amol Palekar and his sister to address her as ma and not as Mrs. Srivastava. They do so and accord her the same respect which one normally accords to his mother. Somewhere he would easily strike a chord with the viewers. Infact very few of his scenes would seem to be far fetched. And the sweet way in which the relationships would be projected did give him an extra edge over the other contemporary directors like Prakash Mehra and Manmohan Desai.

None of the relationships which were shown or projected in his movies were over the board. Even a friendship between an elderly man (Ashok Kumar) and his daughter in law’s sister (Rekha) (Khoobsoorat) was shown so beautifully that one could not help but smile. And the basis of this friendship was the garrulous nature of Rekha which was in a way an anti-thesis to the reticent nature of Dina Pathak, Ashok Kumar’s wife in the film.  The relationships would be all so simple and beautiful which ordinary mortals like us could connect ourselves to. Many of them were actually based on empathy and many would arise out of respect love and affection among the characters. So there weren’t widowed mothers struggling with poverty and the lecherous money lenders. No son promising to and actually fulfilling his promise of bringing justice to all those who did any wrong to him, his mother, his father and God knows whom. No poor boy meets rich girl type of stories. In short Hrishida’s films were zaraa hatke from the typical bollywood fare which has been dished out to us for decades together.



Another feature of Hrishida’s genre of cinema (I feel I could take the liberty of such a nomenclature because I could not remember the name of any other director who has treated us with such type of cinema. But I am open to corrections) which I found really marvellous was the projection of the struggle which the average man goes through in his life. And this struggle is not only against poverty or crisis. Everyday we fight with ourselves. Even as I type, there might be some struggle going on within myself. So we have an Anand Sehgal facing his impending death with zindadili (Anand) or a woman (Jaya Bhaduri) struggling to keep her marriage afloat (Abhimaan) or a man (Ashok Kumar) seeing his only daughter (Jaya Bhaduri) slowly but surely losing her battle to an incurable disease (Mili). Infact Mili (Jaya Bhaduri) herself struggles to-no not to keep death at bay but to keep her father in high spirits. On a lighter note we have a Ram Prasad Sharma (Amol Palekar) fiddling around with his moustache and his hair to stay in the good books of his Hitler like boss (Utpal Dutt) (Golmaal). Again at first sight we might take many of these things as granted. But then this was Hrishida’s own way of bringing out extra ordinary men among people like us. Suddenly the viewer starts seeing himself or his close ones in those characters. And needless to say, there has to be an instant connect between the director’s point of view and what the viewer actually wants to see.



Bollywood in a general sense has always emphasized on the victory of good over evil. Fair enough. But despite the popularity of the run of the mill type of cinema (Here I must confess, I too have watched the first day first shows of many such movies as Rishtey, Hero etc.) there are some questions which remains unanswered. Are such films meant only to reaffirm man’s faith in God? To drive home the oft repeated statement that Bhagwaan ke ghar der hai andher nahi? Could an ordinary mortal actually bash up 23 villians and remain unscathed? Or on a simpler note, how many of us have the courage to jump from the roof of a four storeyed building? But then many of us do go through a marriage on the rocks or many of us have had to face the dejection of our lovers getting married to some body else. Similar to the way as Anand Sehgal had to. We also find out various ways to keep his or her memories alive. Again similar to the way Anand would listen to his lover’s recorded voice on the tape recorder. This used to be the beauty of Hrishida’s genre of cinema. He would show the common man to the common man. And the common man on screen would in very little ways be different from the common man watching him.



As a director, Hrishida would understand the psyche of the average Indian very well. Almost every man worth his manliness does get jealous of his spouse’s rising popularity graph especially if she is in the same profession. So it might not have come as a surprise to us, as viewers when we saw Amitabh Bachchan would get jealous of Jaya Bhaduri’s growing popularity as a singer, in Abhimaan. Infact Amitabh Bachchan had to seek solace from one of his female fans to re-affirm his faith in himself. Another example which comes to mind immediately is the sequence in Anand where Dr. Prakash Kulkarni is seen charging a rich patient of his on account of some imaginary illnesses. Many rich people actually have this paranoia of having been inflicted by various diseases. And when they are told that they are pretty okay, they doubt the capabilities of the doctor. Does it come into mind while watching Anand? I bet it does. A director actually wants to communicate his points of view to the viewers through the medium of cinema. Hrishida’s point of view would be down to earth and close to the hearts of everybody and that is where the instant connect between the characters and the audience would develop. The connect which I have talked of in a previous paragraph.



Why do we actually watch films? If someone would ask me that question I would say, we do it to turn our faces from the harsh realities, which our lives dish out to us dime a dozen, irrespective of the fact that we could turn our faces only for three hours. And I have reasons to believe that many of the readers would agree. So if it is that why we watch films for, what is the point in showing the same things which we want to turn our faces away from? Why do the directors’ points of view be so gruesome and so cruel? Thankfully Hrishida always chose to differ with other directors on this count. Sweet would be his point of view, light hearted would be his approach towards communicating the same.



Another characteristic which made Hrishida different from other directors was his knack of justifying sequences in his movies. A particular sequence would often form the base for a succeeding sequence. Take for example the last scene in Anand. Ever wondered why Rajesh Khanna’s voice come out so late from the record player?  Well it had to because while Amitabh Bachchan and he decided to record their respective voices, Rajesh Khanna actually took some time in grooming himself before he started the now famous “Babu Moshai, zindagi aur maut to oopar waalon ke haath hai jahanpanah aur hum to rangmanch ki kathputliyaan hain”. Even in Abhimaan, Jaya Bhaduri’s popularity had been prophesised by David, who had told Amitabh Bachchan beforehand that they should never sing together. I just wonder at the impact such small things make to a movie! How far a man could think! Coming back to the last scene in Anand, I just remember Amitabh Bachchan’s combined expression of hope and that of resigned despair when he first thinks that Rajesh Khanna has responded to his “Pichchle chhe mahinon se bol bol kar tumne mera sar kha rahe ho.. Ab kyon nahi bolte?” and then realizes that it is only the tape recorder and not Anand speaking. That was an apt end to a beautiful piece of cinema. Infact even remembering the scene moves me to tears.



Hrishida left us in 2004 and thus went away the man who would bring the people like us, to us. A director who could make you laugh and cry at his own free will.

Hrishida is no more. But his legend still lives on.